Telecommunication systems are used to provide many different types of services. Such services include ticket sales for entertainment events, airline reservations, stock-brokerage services, and reservation services for things like golf tee times and hotel rooms. To access these services on a conventional telecommunications system, a caller simply needs to dial the phone number of the service provider and make a service request when the service provider answers the call.
The service provider is not always able to answer the call, however. Sometimes, the service that the service provider provides can become extremely popular and oversubscribed. That is, the number of callers trying to call the service providers can become greater than that which the service provider can physically handle at a given time. A prime example of this occurs when a golf course opens up its golf-tee-time reservation service for Saturday tee-times during the peak of the golf season. Other examples of services that become popular and oversubscribed are services that provide access to World Series tickets and/or Super Bowl tickets. At certain times, such services typically receive many more calls than it has phone lines, and thus become oversubscribed.
When a given service becomes extremely popular and oversubscribed, a party calling the given service, or caller, may receive a busy signal or a voice message stating, for example, that all representatives are busy and that he/she should call again later. The term "caller" as used herein includes general purpose computers operating by stored program control as well as telecommunications equipment operated by humans. Thus, the term "call" as used herein includes voice telephone calls as well as calls or communications over a data network (e.g. TCP/IP, ATM and virtual circuits). When a caller is refused a connection to the service provider due to oversubscription, the caller may be placed in the position of having to repeatedly call the service provider until a connection is finally obtained. Since, in some instances, the caller may not make a connection with the service provider for several hours, such repeat calling can substantially interrupt the daily activities of the caller.
One solution to the just-described oversubscription problem has been to supply the caller with an automatic re-dial feature. Automatic re-dial enables the caller to re-dial a phone number by pressing or activating a single button or function of the terminal equipment or general purpose computer. Although automatic re-dial can reduce the time it takes for a caller to repeatedly call the same service provider (e.g. the same phone number or data network address), it still requires the caller to take the time to physically activate the re-dial feature each time a call to the service provider is made, and it requires the caller to continuously monitor each call to determine whether the service provider has answered the call. As a result, even when provided with automatic re-dial, the caller may still be required to spend a substantial amount of time monitoring each call.